


Throwing Fire

by abscission



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Elder Scrolls Fusion, Demon Summoning, Existential Horror, F/M, Platonic Lancelot - Freeform, aaand the allurance is...probably not what you're expecting?, i dont know what the ending is so, lance has a hero-worship thing going on
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-07
Updated: 2018-09-07
Packaged: 2019-06-26 08:23:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,940
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15659433
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/abscission/pseuds/abscission
Summary: Lance's no stranger to cold. The College is in Winterhold. The Arch-Mage is the epitome of cool (even if he specialized in fiery Destruction magic). His own work goes on in the Midden's Atronach Forge.But this— this icy, blizzard-y mountain that Ezor and Zethrid's stupid grimoire lead them to... the Redguard blood in Lance from his grand-auntie has probably picked an icy crevice somewhere in this twice-blasted nothingness and died.





	Throwing Fire

**Author's Note:**

  * For [redlight](https://archiveofourown.org/users/redlight/gifts).



> This is mostly borne of three cups of Venti Starbucks not-coffee at 3am and a lot of orangey-light rush-writing though I swear I tried to sit in the 24-hour library space to get the _coldness_ right.
> 
> Gah.
> 
> I played Skyrim a whole lot, and I swear I did my homework with Elder Scrolls lore... let's pretend I know what I'm doing, yeah?
> 
> (written for monstertron 2018~ prompt was: demon Lance summoned by witch Allura, alternatively, demon Allura summoned by witch Lance)

Lance scrubs his face with a scratchy mittened-hand, then squints at the splotchy ink on pages flapping crazily in the wind. He slaps a gloved hand on the book to flatten the pages, holds the binding as still as he can, and tries to read the text.

It goes about as well as trying to keep a fight against a blizzard — up ahead Lotor is giving it an admirable try, slinging spells with the tone and ferocity of a mountain lion, lamplight already a feeble flicker to Lance. And as far as Lance knows, there isn’t a spell to clear up short-range visibility. Someone should work on one.

But Lotor’s voice carries well, and the wind mercifully whips his words backwards. It’s by Lotor’s enraged shouting matches against nature that Lance knows the Arch-mage hasn't dropped dead of self-inflicted exhaustion yet

.

Lance's enchantment-laden fur-lined robes are not enough to keep out the cold that gnaws — no, that's too mild, try _gnashing_ — at his extremities. He can't feel his nose, his hood has to be kept on his head by enchantment, and each step sinks him up to his knees in snow, and Lotor's spells are probably the only reason he's not been blown off the mountainside.

No one climbs the mountain ranges at the height of a blizzard in the depth of winter. No one climbs the northern ranges. No one _climbs_. No one does anything this far north, because if you wanted to freeze to death, it'd be faster to throw yourself into the Rift, westwards.   
  
Word was — there's no word, actually, because the northernmost human settlement of a cluster of huts has all upped and frozen to death in their homes, huddled around cold hearths and damp firewood, the autumn harvest rotting in their fields.

It was alarmingly cold inside the houses.

Lotor had taken one look at the completely abandoned and snowed-in village and declared they were on as right a track as they’ll ever be.

“‘The Benevolent Cold’, right?” he mused, tugging his cloak closer around his shoulders. “Given the nature of daedric lords, I assume this Allura Altea reigns over all metaphorical aspects of cold, as well.”   

Lance just hummed, fingers gripped tightly around the heat stone in his pocket to ward off the chill.

Right now, yellow firelight, made sickly by the sleet, pauses and doubles back.

Lotor steadies Lance with a hand on his shoulder. Silver locks of hair fall out of his hood as he bends his head, lowering his mouth to Lance’s ear, shouting to be heard over the wind, “What does the grimoire say?”

Lotor has put his hair in a braid, but pieces of them have escaped, and they’re not long enough to pool on the open book in Lance’s hands, but they are long enough to sweep through Lance’s vision. Lance swipes them away like opening curtains, Lotor makes a small (cute) noise and stuffs them back into his hood with one hand, then Lance plants himself in the snow, manhandles the grimoire with his elbows, and finally keeps the page still enough to get a good look at the roughly drawn map.

It’s not really a grimoire. It barely qualifies as a book.

One of Zethrid's expeditions into the ruins of Daibazaal (in Vvardenfell, and Lance has never dared ask why Lotor’s has more Altmer blood than Dunmer) uncovered a still-operational locking mechanism in a room taller than the Hall of Elements. It whirred and clicked and wailed like a spurned diva and ate up a student, so they called on Ezor and sent her in there.

A season later she emerged with a stack of loose notes, hair singed, skin an alarming shade of pink, ears pointier than a hagraven's claw, eyes sparkling like she's seen the best thing in life and is still floating on the high. And a whole chest of precious gems, but Lotor only took one-thirds of that for College funds. The rest he sent with best regards to Winterhold’s Jarl.

She shoved the papers at Lotor, demanded they investigate and update her, she wants results but she doesn't want to risk her goddamned head over some _winter daedra_ — and ran off back to the damp, dark tunnels her Guild frequents.

The whole College pitched in to decipher the notes, and what they managed to understand sent everyone’s heads spinning.

A lost daedric lord?

A daedric lord of solid elements instead of nebulous ideas like _knowledge_ and _twilight_ and _rot_ … The College is either going to crash and burn into wintery rubble, or discover the largest gap in the history of magic academia.

And prosper. Potentially.

The wind seems to whip away the light, as well. They’ve tried casting Candlelight, but the white glare of the spell lit no further than a lamp's radius, so they stuck to lamps to conserve magicka.

Lotor holds the torch over Lance’s head, huddles in close enough for Lance to feel the heat radiating off his enchantments, and ok, Lance signed on for this suicidal wintery trip for the potential magic discovery and death, but also, just maybe, because he wanted some more time to stare unabashedly at the Arch-Mage's silvery hair, the lilac tint to his skin, the flare in those flint-stone eyes when they get a lead.

They have a map, but it isn't much. It was evidently sketched by someone who hadn't the faintest concept of scale, or even vantage point, but with surprisingly efficient artistic skills for charcoal and parchment.

Lance squints at the landmark they’re supposed to see: rolling clouds over mountain peaks and sheer cliffs, an outcrop of ice and rock that looks like a circlet hanging over the silhouette of an island in the Sea of Ghosts — he points to it, then jabs at the blizzard around them, pulling his cracked lips into a frown.

Lotor sighs.

This close, Lance can feel Lotor’s warm breath across his brow, and it gives him a different kind of shiver.

“Impossible to see anything in this, you’re right,” Lotor straightens. “Let’s find shelter, first, and wait out this—“ Lance almost misses the fingers waving towards his face and goes cross-eyed trying to follow them as they sweep past, but they’re also trailing a heating spell, sending sparks of warm littering across his nose (and his heart), “—thrice-damned blizzard.”

Lance nods, clapping the loose-collection-of-pages-they-call-a-grimoire-for-academic-honesty closed, and freeing a hand. He spares half a second to focus on his intended target: a roof over their heads, walls to keep out the wind, a fire-pit, a floor to separate their feet from the snow— and casts Clairvoyance.

The route it traces shines bright blue, easily visible in the rampaging blizzard.

Lotor gives his shoulder an appreciative pat, then forges ahead.

With some effort, Lance stows the grimoire inside his cloak, then follows.

*

Half-expecting to find a damp, cold, cave, it’s to cautious delight that the two mages clamber past a rocky outcrop to see the faint silhouette of a shack at the end of the spell’s illuminated path.

With their target in sight, Lance drops the spell, focusing on movement.

Lotor surges forwards, bringing the firelight with him. Lance curses his shorter stature, struggling with the now waist-deep snow. Lotor reaches the shack first, manhandles his way into the smudgy shadow that is the shack.

And shadows fall across Lance.

Five steps out from the snowed-in porch and Lotor’s tracks, there’s a exclamation of triumph from inside, and orange light flickers to life behind frosted windows.

Against a moonless night and the whipping wind blocking out starlight, the shack’s windows shine like a lighthouse.

The hilarity of his situation hits Lance very suddenly, burying him like a snow drift.

He didn’t come on this excursion because he wanted to make a name for himself, _well_ , it’s partly that, but mostly it’s — Lotor.

It’s entirely Lotor.

If he’s in the mood to lie, he’ll say he wanted time to talk theory. It’s not everyday that you get an audience with the head of the College, nor his undivided attention. He might even put on a grandiose air and say _why, yes, his work in the Forge_ does _mean he has a daedric inclination—_

If he’s in the mood to be a bit more brave, or in a situation that shocks him into frankness, like now, he just wanted an excuse to be alone with the elf, specifically an excuse and a situation to show his prowess at magic and maybe impress the Arch-Mage _—_

But Lotor hasn’t looked at him any different for all the months they’ve spent together.

If Lance is undergoing an epiphany in a blizzard, he might as well chase the thought to its end — his hero-worship/crush is hopelessly one-sided.

Lance works alone in the Midden. He doesn’t have an assistant, doesn’t need one. Pidge and Hunk come down to watch him, sometimes, but they don’t like the damp or the cold anymore than he does, so they don’t stay long. Lotor comes down to supervise his summonings sometimes, but his confidence in Lance’s mastery over Conjuration is a doubled-edged thing, because he barely comes down.

Here in the snow, just one more snow-slogging step to a reprieve from the cold, Lance suddenly feels lonely.

Just the usual kind of lonely, mind. He’s pretty sure Matt feels lonely too, working in the archives alone. And Ezor, stalking the rancid tunnels beneath Riften alone.

What he’s feeling is no different from anyone else.

It’s suddenly much, much colder. Lance has no idea how, but the cold seeps past his many layers to tug at his skin, numb his bones, and with a rattling shudder, he takes the last step onto the porch.

At that moment, the door opens, spilling warm orange light and heat like a tipped cauldron. Lotor pokes his head out, frowning, a question forming on his lips.

His gaze locks with Lance’s, softens, and Lance, likewise, feels a smite warmer from the worry that creases Lotor’s brow.

Brushing off a clump of snow on his sleeve, Lance takes one more step, and his foot goes right through the wooden flooring.

In the blink of an eye, the hole spiders open into infinity and swallows the wood under his other foot and in the next moment, with a muffled crack, there’s a hole in the front porch and no more Lance.

In that moment blindness brought on by shock, Lance sees a flash of arctic blue, feels fingers of frost ghost over his hands, and an ethereal laugh that’s more like the crackle of ice wraiths than anything human.

It’s not a far distance to fall, although Lance’s heart fell upwards, and now sits somewhere in the vicinity of of his throat, beating fit to burst, blocking attempts at speech and hindering attempts to regulate his breathing.

Lotor lunges forwards, makes sure the flooring around the hole is secure, then peers over the edge.

“Lance?”

Lotor can’t see anything. He can’t even tell how deep the hole goes. Before he can cast Candlelight, though, there’s movement in the thickest shadows, and a dim orb of light sputters into being, hovering above Lance.

“I’m fine!” comes the shaky call, and as Lance picks himself up to his full height, Lotor lets out a relieved sigh.

That is, until Lance looks around, groans, and crosses his arms. “Of _course_ this hole is going to be _just_ a little bit taller than I am.”

Lotor huffs a laugh. “Shall I go find some rope, or shall I levitate you out of there?”

Lance blinks, then quickly shakes his head. “Find that rope, thanks. Last time you tried to use telekinesis you smashed a hole in the wall.”

*

Now there’s a hole in the porch to navigate.

As Lotor goes around placing sealing and warming spells in all the wind-leaking corners, Lance huddles close to the fire, trying to warm his fingers. The fire crackles merrily, but it’s small, and Lance can’t see any store of firewood except the ones already burning, and those are already dark from use.

Then Lotor sits down beside him, rooting through the pockets sewn to his cape.

He pulls out a piece of salted jerky, offers one to Lance, tearing into his own.

Lance takes it, and the two settle into a comfortable silence for a while, just watching the fire crackle and soaking in the warmth.

It’s not to last.

Just as Lance is finally finding feeling back in his extremities, Lotor stands up, staring worriedly at the fire.

“I’ll get more firewood. You scope out the house, make sure there aren’t any—“ he flicks a hand around vaguely. “Yeah?”

Lance sniffs, _shit when did he get a cold?_ and nods. Probably means to make sure they won’t get ambushed by a sudden spawn of dremora, or freeze to death because the roof caved in. Stuff like that.

“I’ll be right back,” Lotor says, throwing the cloak around his shoulders and giving Lance one last look.

He tries to be quick, but the opening and closing of doors to the shack still let in a curl of icy air.

When he’s gone, Lance sighs.

It’s silly, and probably just him, but the room feels colder now that he’s alone; the roof lower, the shadows deeper.

It’s an exceedingly small shack. A fireplace at one end, a single, molting bed at the other, and rotting floorboards in between.

The fire’s light flickers feebly at the edges of its radius.

With another sigh, Lance stands up and makes for the bed. Better make sure the frame’s sturdy.

As he crosses the space, it slowly dawns on him that this excursion might be empty, after all. That despite a trail of clues and strange phenomenon that has no other explanation, they aren’t going to find an artifact waiting at the end of this quest.

And where are they supposed to look, anyway? The vast tundra of Skyrim’s northern ranges stretch from horizon to horizon, and the map could he referring to any place, any spot.

Too vast.

Too cold.

One of the windows shatters in a violent spray of dirty glass and wood splinters. Lance spins around; the blizzard slams through the window, and torrent of sleet and ice and knife-like gales.

The fire goes out.

Secunda and Masser are both new. The stars are blocked by clouds. The darkness is total and complete. Lance couldn’t have seen his fingers if he stretched out his hand.

And then he remembers — that the grimoire is incomplete, their knowledge of this daedra is porous, and the requirements of the summoning (or sighting, the cipher was unreliable; it’s likely the intention inherent to a term like ‘ _summoning_ ’ is from the other side — the Daedric Lord’s side, which makes it no different from a ‘ _sighting_ ’ in Mundus) is similarly full of holes.

All they know: this mountain range, this month, a moonless night, and a blizzard so harsh it blankets the world.

And a map, a useless map, of the view of the Ghost Sea.

This mountainside...what’s its view? Why is there a shack in a place no one goes, stocked (minimally anyway) with living amenities?

(A pheasant hangs rotted and frozen on a banister in the far corner.)

A different kind of chill grips Lance.

Lotor’s somewhere out there, in the absolute dark, with nothing but his magicka to help him. They packed a lot of potions, yes, but it’s still a finite resource.

What if this is the mountain in the grimoire, and one of them — either of them — fulfills the unknown requisites for a summoning? Stranger things have happened in Tamriel. Or just something simpler, a booby trap or a draugar ambush?

If anything happens to Lotor... a claw of ice hooks itself in Lance’s throat. Up to this point, he’s never truly considered it.

An arch-mage doesn’t just _fall_.

If anything happens to Lotor, he’ll be too far away to help; he won’t even know; he might _never_ know—and that thought is enough to propel Lance towards the door.

—to be slammed back when he crashes into an invisible force.

A barrier!

By whom? When? Did Lotor cast it?

And then Lance realizes the wind’s stopped rattling the walls; the wretched howling had dimmed to but a whisper. A look at the broken window, however, shows the blurry grey of a blizzard at the height of its power, as it had been since morning.

Another thing: there are flowers of frost, pale, blue, delicate and intricate, blooming on the window sill.

In the deathly silence that had enveloped the shack, Lance can hear the crackles as the flowers grow curled petals and long stigmas, and then crinkle, wilt, crumble into dust.

First, all across the window. Then, in a trail like a path of dainty faery footfalls, spreading to the wall and down to the floor in front of the fireplace.

There, they gather, folding over one another, blossoming into a misting and crumbling flowerbed, and so thick, they completely obscure the floorboards underneath.

A meadow of ice.

He doesn’t notice tendrils of an oozing dark flowing over the jagged pieces of glass still affixed to their frame.

The ice is an otherworldly, luminescent blue. Lance knows something momentous is happening, but he can’t look away, even though his eyes is starting to sting, he’s had them open for so long.

Several things happen at once.

Lance suddenly _does_ notice the purple-black sludge pooling all around his feet, making an island of the ice; beyond the now-visible barrier (a sheen of oily rainbows and nebulae colors) the door is kicked in and Lotor throws himself inside, wreathed in flames from head to toe — _he’ll be alright,_  thinks a distant part of Lance’s mind, _fire is his element_ ; a puff of dust rises out from the flowerbed and expands into the vague shape of a human.

“Wards!” He hears Lotor roar, the filtered voice muffled and warped.

And in a moment of clarity Lance fumbles in the pockets of his robes, pulling out one of the special warding scrolls they’ve prepared.

In three heartbeats the full-body, full-powered ward has enveloped him in a sheen of green, and through the shimmery filter of the ward over his eyes, he realizes the dust has settled — into the shape of a woman.

Her dress is the color of winter’s first snowfall. It clings to her dark shoulders like icicles, and the rest of the overflowing fabric drips at her feet. Frosty flowers peek out from under her dress where they’ve been covered, their petals splintering in chiming tinkles to the swishing of fabric.

Skin dark as dusk glows with health, in stunning contrast with her ice-colored hair and her ice-colored dress, radiant in their translucency.

Eyes dusted with silver opens, and they shine like a fresh winter dawn.

“Hello, Lance,” says the daedra, voice like the crackling of arctic ice-shelves. “You may address me as Allura Altea." Her eyes glow like purple stars. “You have come a long way, faithful pilgrim.”

Then she grins, and her teeth reminds Lance of serrated, broken glaciers.

She waits, dark hands conspicuously folded in front of her dress. Her nails are pointed, pale lilac, and glitter like diamonds.

She’s obviously waiting for a reply from him, but Lance is too distracted.

She doesn’t look like — she looks radiant, regal. The form she chose is so— Allura shifts, and a curl of bright hair falls forwards, brushing the gentle swell of her breasts, already accentuated by the dress.

Lance clears his throat nervously.

Her eyebrows rise and she laughs, another cascade of icicles, and her eyes scrunches closed in a manner that could only be called _adorable_ , hiding their otherworldly glow.

 _Daedra!_ Lance shouts to himself, and it clears his head somewhat. They don’t know her full sphere of influence yet. If he’s not careful, who knows what in the world could happen to him?

“What is your title?” Lance asks, going into scholar mode. “Your realm in Oblivion? Your—“

“Oh, snowflake, you don’t have to ask that, I’ll show you!” Allura trills a laugh, then she sweeps off the pedestal of blue flowers, fabric swirling like a whirlpool, and a one step that’s at once a dainty shuffle and a stride twisting space—

Icy lips meet his, bars of ice encircle his neck. There’s the spark-sizzle of negative contact with the wards, but it doesn’t seem to faze Allura.

She’s taller than Lance, and she uses the height to her advantage, wrapping herself around Lance. Fingers tug at his hair to force his head back, and it’s like ice-cubes dropped down his back. He shudders right into her.

There’s a faint pounding at the edges of his hearing, a panicked shouting, but before he can turn to search for it, coldness envelopes the sides of his head, fingernails tap at his temples, and Allura shoves a tongue between his teeth, and then he sees and hears nothing else.

—She’s right. There’s no need to ask any questions.

Everything she is and will be, everything he is _to_ _be_ (to her), every painstaking detail pours through where their skin touches (mouth, nose, cheeks, the fluttering of her eyelashes on his closed lids) and explodes in his mind with resplendent color.

A world of blinding white and startling purple; patches of well-worn blue and pink; a treasured field of red, red flowers, stained and nourished by the blood and bone of her fallen champions (nameless, faceless, but Lance knows each and every one of them now — they stretch behind him like the rotting, frozen tail of some great space-faring beast).

Allura draws back, all glittering eyes and flushed skin and full, plum-colored lips, pressing their foreheads together, and all Lance feels is the cold. Cold on his skin, cold under his skin, cold to the marrow of his bones.

She laughs, and now it sounds like the spring thaw, and her fingers running across his cheeks like dappled snowdrops are a different kind of warmth, no less piercing, and her nails skitter across the pulse in the hollow of his throat and she leans in, obscuring Lance from the outside world with her hair and her arms and her wispy dress, whispering, “Spread my benevolence across your world, Conjurer, be my fire and my hearth, and you shall be rewarded in kind.”

A weighted coil settles in Lance’s hand, but all he sees when he looks down are the curls of Allura’s hair, thick, lustrous, glowing. They lead back to her eyes, alluring, entrancing, holes punched through the weave of the world, and Lance falls—

“Betray me,” says the daedra, sinking winter nails into his skin, “and you will know desolation in all of Nirn.”

She straightens with a dazzling smile, pats his cheek with a hand. “I am merciful, and so is the cold. The Serrated Blade will serve you well, my champion. The Arches of Oriande gives you their blessing.

A flash of darkness, a clap of deafening silence: the lord is gone, her flowers and her darkness with her, and the barrier falls.

Lotor rushes in, bringing light and fire and warmth and worried, hovering words, but Lance no longer has eyes for him.

The whip of blades in his hand is cool to the touch, and Lotor falls silent when Lance raises it.

Unravels it.

 

His mind is as calm as the tundra on a clear day. His focus clear as fresh-formed ice. There’s a distant laughing, charming, feminine, ricocheting in the back of his mind, and he can’t feel his fingers.

 

He swings it down.

 


End file.
